Peter in Honduras

What’s that strange feeling? What’s that word….? Satisfaction?

Is the spark actually back?

I hope so.

After months of having given up on international development and generally feeling depressed with my work in the Peace Corps I suddenly feel… good!

How do I know?

I can’t sleep.

I toss and turn, dreaming/thinking about ideas and future plan, occasionally fully opening my eyes when a really good idea enters my mind, only to wish I had never thought of it because now I’m lying on my back (I can’t fall asleep like this) with my eyes wide open staring at the ceiling.

I suppose I owe some explanation. As you might have noticed, since about April I haven’t been posting as frequently, and the posts I’ve put up have been of a dispirited nature. This has many causes, but perhaps the easiest explanation is simply monotony and lack of visible results.

But then came this week.

A few weeks earlier, my site-mate Chris, a Water & Sanitation Engineer, mentioned a little town called Tomalá and said they were interested talking to me about some projects. We went out there Monday morning on a bumpy country road. The town is only about 36 km from San Marcos but it takes 2 hours and 15 minutes in bus and a bit faster in car. Yes, that’s an average speed of 12 MPH.

We arrived in the afternoon and went to the mayor’s office. The mayor was out of town getting a master’s degree (on the job training?) but our guide, Tito, knew everything and everyone in Tomalá, so we were well looked after. Tito had come back from the States five years ago after earning some cash working in a factory that recycles cloth. He says he worked up to 60 straight hours once cutting the cloth, surrounded by dust and wearing mouth, nose, and ear protection. Ugh. But he brought back enough money to buy about 100 acres and now he’s got some coffee and raises cattle for slaughter.

Tito is motivated. He’s seen prosperity (albeit moderate, he lived in South Carolina). He’s lived in poverty. And he’s ready to work. The whole drive out, and much of the two days I was there, he would just talk and talk about ideas and problems and more ideas. If we actually do everything we agreed to, I believe I agreed to become business partners with him in a massive coffee operation…

The afternoon we arrived Tito had to go drop some guys off in an aldea so Carlos took us on a tour of the town. We checked out the water system, the new warehouse to store beans and corn, the radio station and training center, and a number of important citizens. Every time we ran into someone important, Carlos would say: “We’re meeting tonight at 7pm in the mayor’s office so that Peter can tell us about Peace Corps.” We must have met 2 or 3 ex mayors during the tour, it seemed like the whole community was involved and excited about working together. My favorite ex mayor was Don Orlando who ushered us into his house to show us everything he had and explain what it was and how it worked. Corn, cheese, sugar cane, chickens, pigs, depulping machines, his new coffee drying patio, everything! It was great.

So at 7 o’clock I went to the mayor’s office expecting to be kept waiting. Nope, everyone was there and full of questions. What does a volunteer do? What does it cost? When can he come? What do we need to do?

Wow.

They also answered all of my questions too. They were full of ideas for projects and ways to involve a volunteer. Working with the high school, the computer center, the radio station, the women’s group, the bakery, the warehouse, the small microfinance groups, everything! And right away they wanted my help in creating a course to teach people web design. So I promised to stay another day and not go home right away so that we could work on some web design ideas.

The next day, right on time, Carlos, Lorena (the administrator of the computer center), and I worked on web design. And they got it! By the end of the day we had a basic website and decided to put together a short course and get community groups designing their own websites hosted through the computer center’s webpage.

Reading back over what I’ve written this doesn’t seem as exciting as it was. I guess I can’t convey the motivation and energy of these people and how reinvigorating that was for me. Since this is getting long, I’ll close with my exciting list of things to do for this next week:

• Create market study for a new agricultural project in order to secure funds for an irrigation project

• Create a marketing plan for a group that is set to raise chickens and pigs

• Attend a workshop on business plans where we have a proposal competing with 66 other proposals (out of 190 applications) for $15,000 in start up money.

• Web design course for the Computer Center in Tomalá

• Meeting with the Women’s Coop to discuss hiring a sales associate to promote their products and increase sales

• Working with the Honey Coop to create an electronic system to handle sales, production, purchases and generate inventory, income statement, and balance sheet reports. 

• Coaching a baseball team of 8-12 year olds

• Business simulation program with youth with the goal of creating a functioning business during the summer (winter) vacation.